Generally, all went quite well. But the devil's in the details, of course. The biggest detail was a bit of self-inflicted stress. Being security-minded, I locked the bikes to Karen's car. Then being overly efficient, I deliberately left the bulky key fob for my Monstah Truck at home. Including, of course, the bike lock keys.
D'oh.
As I was able to determine right after arriving and figuring out my catastrophic error, case-hardened steel U-shaped locks are, as they should be, quite resistant to bolt cutters, hacksaws, and reciprocating saws. My Tasmanian She-Babe-O-Luscious Welder wife had suggested that a hand grinder would likely do the trick with the right blade, and we needed one anyhow, so I oughta just go buy one.
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| Mama Bear, blasting away with the Plasma cutter, which could have sliced through the lock in about 5 seconds. |
Unfortunately, I was too worried about gittin' the job done to remember the camera, as a night shot of me holding the lock that held the bikes to the car while Steve's grinder threw off massive sparks would have been sweet. This is all I got, though:
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| It's a thing of beauty. Really. |
Anyway, on to the race. The swim went well, in the sense that I was the fastest in my age group. But despite the fact that I've actually been swimming over the last several months, my swim leg has not gotten faster. Frustrating. When I breathed on my left side, I would drift quite strongly to the right. When I breathed on my right side, I went straight. Maybe a wetsuit fit thing, maybe a stroke thing. And then there was the inevitable scrum of passing people in previous heats. I think I'm actually someone who would benefit from the much maligned mass start, and not just because I played water polo in college. :-}
Biking felt solid. The course, which twice climbed a normally inaccessible hill at the Point Loma Naval base, was beautiful and fun. As it's my weakest leg and the one for which I have the least "feel," I stuck to my plans to "Train like a lion, race like a lamb," and "Go to war with the army you have, not the army you want." I managed to stay within the realm of my actual abilities instead of the ones I would have if wishes were quadriceps. My avg. speed was 20.2, MPH, which is pretty good for me on a 24 mile hilly course. Surprisingly, my bike leg was 14th out of 74 in my age group.
Transitions were OK, but not stellar. I've amassed the info on how to make them quicker, but have yet to practice things like rubber-banding my shoes to the bike and donning them on the fly, which would likely save me a couple minutes.
My numero uno goal was to finish strong. Having practiced transition runs after all long bike rides made a big difference in how quickly I found my running legs. I immediately felt strong, and started to savor my favorite triathlon pursuit: passing people on the run who passed me on the bike. A little too much, as it happens: I was cookin' along at about 9 to 9.5 mph, a pace which would allow me to realize a dream of finishing a 10K triathlon leg in under 40 minutes. But alas, my ego was slightly larger than my legs, and I had to slack off a little for the last 5K, finishing the leg (purportedly) in 43:29. On the bright side, this was still 2 minutes faster than my previous best 10K run split.
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| That's a "Hang Loose" with sloppy technique. |
Nonetheless, I was happy with the result: 2:23:16, 5 minutes faster than my best/last Oly Tri, and on a harder bike course. As it turns out, though, the race officials found the course to be 10.2 Km. So FWIW, I would have crossed the real finish line in 2:22:26, with a 42:39 10K split. . . Karen finished in 3:20, which was far better than a summer of training in the Tucson heat had led her to expect. She's hooked on tris as well, and may very well be talked into doing a Half Ironman with me this coming spring!
The rest of the weekend was lovely as expected. We dined, we slept in, we left to come home when we darn well pleased. Could've used a couple more days, of course. . .
